Community Living

From a Jewish perspective, the spiritual hunger in American life is not exclusively concerned with improved religious practice. That hunger has its full solution in shared values, daily life and communal belonging that can then be marked by religious practice and theological interpretation.

The search for moral certainty, for clarity and integrity, can be fulfilled best if it takes place in the context of a community with shared values and practices. Jewish religion will not be revived solely by more meaningful worship and study of Torah. The creation of a vital Jewish life can be fully achieved only when study and prayer are accompanied by shared living.

It is the task of a rabbinical college in our time to concern itself with learning and teaching Torah, and with a better and more vital use of liturgy and ritual to east the moments of pain in people's lives and increase the meaning in their celebration. But the central challenge of rabbis for the next generation will be to function as leaders who can help to create and maintain communities of meaning.

Seminary as Community

Jews who decide to study for the rabbinate do so not only because they wish to serve the Jewish people. Often their first motive is to deepen themselves as Jews. The experience of vibrant daily Jewish communal living is something that most of them have had only in a transitory way.

Thus, one of the central challenges of rabbinical school is to create a vibrant, Jewishly serious, open and pluralistic community that can help students grow menschlichkeit and in Jewish knowledge and practice. That kind of rabbinical school immerses students in an atmosphere and attitudes that model what successful communities can be like. When these students become rabbis and go forth to serve, they will aspire to building and living that kind of Jewish community.

Thus, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) strives to create an atmosphere of warmth and caring that minimizes hierarchy and encourages experimentation, dialogue and student leadership. Creativity and Jewish spiritual renewal thrive in an atmosphere of pluralism and mutual support.

In this post-halakhic era, when the world is changing faster than ever before, the RRC trains rabbis able to face the way in which we must delve afresh into the richness of Jewish text and experience in order to find precedents and values that we can bring to bear in fresh ways on the challenges of our own time. The core of the Reconstructionist rabbinical curriculum is civilizational, tying together the unfolding history of the Jewish people with its theological evolution and the changes in its practice. As students survey the many genres of Jewish religious and popular literature, they come to recognize the multi-textured unfolding of Jewish life that has been led by those who understood that Judaism would thrive best by adapting to the changing circumstances of the world in which Jews have found themselves. Ongoing study of biblical and rabbinic texts, Hebrew literature, and mystical and theological works takes place in this context. We also study the sociology of American Jewry.

The Educational Experience

In RRC's classrooms, the professors blend traditional study with scholarly analysis, and encourage expression of subjective spiritual concerns and reflection on professional implications. This encourages a holistic approach to Jewish life, which is one of our objectives. But it is not enough to study texts in the classroom.

If we are to hear the many voices of tradition in a way that speaks to the diversity of American Jews searching for meaning and values, we must actively dialogue with the texts. Study in hevruta (study pairs) in a bet midrash (study hall) with help available enhances students' connection to Bible and Talmud, midrash, philosophy, kabbalah, and poetry. The energy from this personal and interpersonal engagement transforms the classroom atmosphere and enhances personal thinking and decision making. It is critical to Jews' finding the way to their own place amidst Jewish tradition, making our heritage relevant to our own time.

Another major aspect of RRC's orientation grows out of the recognition that most American Jews are not involved in congregations. If we want to reach them, we must go where they are. Thus, the College offers five professional specializations to its students: congregations; hospital, hospice and geriatric chaplaincy; Hillel and college campus; education; and community organization.

Each specialization combines coursework and internships. Thus our students not only study counselling and homiletics. They also study group work and administration, education and outreach as well as such topics as late adolescent psychology or programming for older adults. Jewish community builders need to be excellent teachers of Torah. They also need the advanced professional skills that organizational leaders need in these turbulent times.

The College recognizes that rabbis will have contact with non-Jews. Expertise is needed for inter-religious dialogue and partnerships in civic affairs and social action. Furthermore non-Jews are part of the families of most American Jews today. So the College requires our students to take courses in comparative religion, including at least one in Christianity.

The Contemporary Rabbi

Rabbis also play a critical role in helping American Jews develop their relationship to world Jewry and to Israel, ideally one that combines love of land and people with an honest exploration of current problems and challenges. Thus RRC requires its students to spend a year studying in Israel, and devotes time to considering the issues facing world Jewry.

We need rabbis of moral integrity and spiritual depth who understand a changed reality. Jewish communities used to create organizations to fulfill their needs. Now Jewish organizations create and sustain communities. The rabbi of the future must know how to guide the development of community within an organization, how to teach Torah in a democratic setting, how to provide spiritual guidance that has authority without being authoritarian. This is the training offered in the Jewish learning community of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College thus trains Jewish leaders deeply rooted in Jewish tradition who understand our contemporary situation and have a vision for the Jewish community of the 21st century.